Yep, Nevada is officially dropping their state ObamaCare exchange, too

posted at 8:01 pm on May 20, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

After much apparent pleading from the contractor, Nevada made the decision to drop their individual ObamaCare website builder Xerox and is now the next state hitching its wagon to the federal online exchange. It all looked like it could have gone so well back in October, until users started trying to actually sign up for health insurance and began to uncover the more than 1,500 defects embedded in the site, according to a report from Deloitte last month, and the Silver State has finally realized that the situation cannot be salvaged any time soon — and certainly not in time for this year’s open enrollment period. Via the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The board of the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange voted this morning to dump the contractor that botched the building of its Nevada Health Link website, and to move partly into the federal system for at least the next year.

The move would let the state exchange keep its autonomy and its member-based funding, and to allow the marketplace to switch to an operational website from another state for its 2016 enrollment period.

The change to a new system could cost as much as $57 million in addition to the $72 million contract the exchange already had with Xerox. But exchange officials said they’ve already applied for federal grants to cover the cost. Plus, the cost of buying another system may drop considerably by the time the exchange is ready to go forward in late 2015, state officials said.

The board’s decision ends a troubled, two-year relationship with Xerox, which fell woefully behind schedule on its Nevada Health Link build. The system debuted on Oct. 1 to hundreds of technical flaws and software glitches, and sign-ups have been held to about a third of the initial enrollment target of 118,000.

The board had been considering a number of options, including bringing in a third-party manager to work with Xerox, transferring to another state’s functioning system, or moving to the federal exchange permanently, but they ultimately landed on the above — and in all of their forethought, they have “already applied for federal grants” to cover the potential $57 million in added costs. …How lucky.

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It all looked like it could have gone so well back in October, until users started trying to actually sign up for health insurance and began to uncover the more than 1,500 defects embedded in the site,

Considering that the internet is mere decades old and that web sites in general are still in the very early infancy of development and … and how few actually do work correctly (even after years of constant development and tweaking) are we asking too much of the federal and state governments to develop a web site that does what we want it to?

This is government work at its best! As someone who used to do SW dev’t, working for the feds is miserable. Bureaucrats know only where their butthole is. Oh, and their navel, which is where their SW requirements come from – their testing requirements from the aforementioned.

Why anyone trusts government, I have no idea.

Taxes are not to get things done; they are to pay for rapacious bureaucrats and politicians.

Yes, the Internet is pretty young, but I would say that there are websites out there that operate with sufficient complexity which suggests a successful website was very possible. Amazon comes to mind. There are many others.

I work in the government and I chalk up these fiascos at the federal and state level to people running these startups who don’t have a clue how to manage a program properly. They’ve had three years at least to get these websites running. With a highly professional program manager and real experts in design and security working together, a successful rollout was very possible.

As I said, I work in the federal government and the IT support in my org is the worst I’ve ever seen and that’s saying a lot. And it’s the worst because the front end doesn’t know what the back end is doing. I strongly suspect that is what happened here. Unengaged management which should have been constantly guiding the website developers. I can hear the conversation now: “Well, IT developer, how’s the developing thing going?” “Just great, sir!” “Any problems?” “No, not a one!” “Great! See you next month!”

These bureaucrats owed us more than that. And the contractors were making BOATLOADS of money which should have been an incredible incentive to work 24/7 to make the rollouts successful.

Now the American taxpayer is stuck with the bill and a product which is just going to be thrown in the garbage.

I worked with a guy in the Navy who was assigned the task of developing the future of our community. He took it very, very, very seriously. He was a slave driver and, don’t get me wrong, he drove himself like a slave too. Many nights he slept on top of his desk. No joke. The product that he and his team put together still stands as a work of organizational genius. They didn’t stop until they got it right. That’s the level of effort that should have gone into these websites.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are people out there who need to go to jail for defrauding the American people.

The change to a new system could cost as much as $57 million in addition to the $72 million contract the exchange already had with Xerox. But exchange officials said they’ve already applied for federal grants to cover the cost.

Oh great – waste my money the first time, with your failed website – and again with federal grants. What a bunch of

Interesting story – but bilking the government and doing sub-standard work seems to be the norm these days. Unfortunately, nobody – from the administrators in Oregon who pissed thru over $200 million Federal dollars on their failed site – to the geniuses in D.C. who’ve wasted exponentially more – is ever held accountable, or threatened with jail time. Which results in more bilking and sub-standard work.

It is not $17 Trillion, or long term even as low as the est. $50 Trillion, it is all of U.S. sea to sea, border to border all every house, every higway, every lake, every oil well, every dam thing, pawned off now current.

Well it makes sense. It only took 48 hours to take on $500,000 in liability with one patient when they couldn’t figure out how to allocate his payment. As far as I know Nevada is on the hook for his bills. My taxes of course.

Yet another bunch of meanie-pants who just won’t let people have healthcare. Let’s hope someone -anyone- in the administration will watch a newscast or read a paper or overhear Nevada congressman talking about this and get even more “madder than hell” and find out “whose ass to kick” because this is “unacceptable”.

I would honestly not feel comfortable critiquing these healthcare websites for at least until the internet is 50 or 60 years old. Then we should have it down pat.

hawkdriver on May 20, 2014 at 10:17 PM

I hear you. I don’t agree, but I hear you. If the sites were properly developed, the problem is more than likely the screwed up directives in the law that they have to follow.

Again, there are many websites out there that work at a very high level. Unfortunately, those needed professionals to develop them. Something the government is sorely lacking which is what happens when the contract goes to the lowest bidder. Though, I have to admit that if the lowest bidder gets hundreds of millions of dollars, I wouldn’t want to see what the high bidders were offering.

CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE the conflicting, ridiculous, impossible demands Xerox must have been receiving from the Client during the system’s construction? This is simply not the kind of thing a government would do well, and I’d bet any company, no matter how competent, would end up in the same predicament.

Again, there are many websites out there that work at a very high level. Unfortunately, those needed professionals to develop them. Something the government is sorely lacking which is what happens when the contract goes to the lowest bidder. Though, I have to admit that if the lowest bidder gets hundreds of millions of dollars, I wouldn’t want to see what the high bidders were offering.

NavyMustang on May 21, 2014 at 8:53 AM

It wasn’t necessarily the lowest bidder that won the contracts – let’s remember that cronyism played a huge part in the contract awards. Anybody in the private sector, would have looked at CGI Federal’s dismal track record and passed them over – not so with the wizards in D.C. A lot of this is just the gross negligence that thrives in the public sector. It’s not their money – they don’t care. Until that ambivalence is addressed – this isn’t going away.